1SJPWQ F)i Opct Rotated Press
-*■ ^ w w 1 ^ JLC|V^ LJ %r Edited by Brandon Loomis
Romanians revert to rations to stop hoarding
BUCHAREST, Romania - Already
meager meat supplies have become
critical and some communities have
imposed short-term rationing to fight
hoarding by consumers long denied
the bare necessities, a top food offi
cial said Wednesday.
Romanian Radio and government
officials announced, meanwhile, that
trials would begin next week for six
top henchmen of ousted Communist
dictator Nicolae Ceauscscu, includ
ing the No. 3 man in his government.
Officials say the trials will be public
and nationally televised.
Food shortages were widespread
in the last years of Ccauscscu’s 24
year tenure because of a forced ex
port drive aimed at paying off Roma
nia's multibillion-dollar foreign debt.
BcforcCeausescu’sdownfall Dec.
22, each Romanian was restricted to
1.1 pounds of meat a week, and sugar,
oil, eggs and butter also were either
rationed or unavailable.
In the provinces, rationing was even
stricter. In Sibiu, 125 miles northwest
of Bucharest, people made do with
2.2 pounds of meat every three months,
less than one stick of butter a month
and half a loaf of bread daily.
Although food supplies have im
proved some since the revolution,
Vintila Rotaru, minister in charge of
the domestic food industry, was pes
simistic when asked about the supply
of meat.
“Iam confronted with a very bad
situation,” he told The Associated
Press. “We are speaking of a critical
shortage.”
Ion Radulescu, manager of
Bucharest’s main distribution center
for relief supplies donated from abroad,
described meat, along with dairy
products, as the most vital food aid.
One lest of the provisional govern
ment’s credibility is its ability to ensure
adequate food supplies to Romania’s
23 million citizens, and both Rotaru
and Radulescu expressed concern about
the short term. Rotaru said he hoped
food imports - now a trickle - would
increase enough by April to banish
the threat of shortages.
The daily Romania Libera said
Wednesday several thousand people
had protested in Brasov, about 100
miles north of the capital, Jan. 13-14
‘ ‘about the aggravation of food distri
bution ... and the re-introduction of
ration cards for food,” and spoke ol
the re-introduction of rationing in other
communities in a separate article.
Rotaru acknowledged some local
rationing but described it as a short
term measure introduced to stop panic
buying by consumers used to years of
deprivation and skeptical of whether
the improvement in supplies was
permanent.
“They started hoarding meat, sa
lami, all that they found, fearing the
past,” Rotaru said.
Butchers and shop clerks polled at
random in Bucharest stores said wide
spread hoarding continued.
*1 COUPON I
PER VISIT |
Soviets respond to ethnic violence
MOSCOW - The Kremlin on
Wednesday told the thousands of
soldiers it sent to the Caucasus to
shoot if need be to halt bands of
Azerbaijanis and Aremenians fight
ing each other in hills around the
disputed territory of Nagorno-Kara
bakh.
Thousands of Armenian refugees
poured from the southern republic of
Azerbaijan, many beaten or chased
from their homes by angry mobs.
Some blamed the attacks on Azer
baijanis who earlier Hed ethnic vio
lence in Armenia.
The death toll rose to 58, mostly
Armenians, and the number of in
jured to 169 in five days of civil
warfare, an Interior Ministry official
said.
The evening TV news show
“Vremya” ran a statement from the
KQB and the interior and defense
ministries, which control troops in
the area, that said:
“Risking their lives, they have so
far refrained from using arms against
criminals to prevent bloodshed.
“However, a sharp increase in
outrageous attacks has made the situ
ation unbearable,” and the soldiers
now were permitted to use their weap
ons in accordance with military rules
and Soviet law.
Four burned bodies were found in
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, the
official news agency Tass said Wed
nesday.
Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, said Wednesday that
Islamic fervor was behind events in
Soviet Azerbaijan, and warned
Moscow not to deal harshly with the
Shiite Moslem upsurge, Tehran radio
reported.
The broadcast, monitored in Cy
prus, quoted Khamenei as saying
‘ ‘anyone who thinks or pretends that
the motives behind these movements
are ethnic or nationalistic is making a
big mistake. These sentiments are
Islamic, and Soviet leaders should
face this fact with realism.”
Research questions ability of oat bran
to decrease blood cholesterol levels
BOSTON - Contrary to cereal ads
and popular belief , oat bran docs not
lower cholesterol levels, according to
a study that challenges one of the
biggest food crazes of the 1980s.
The new research concluded that
people who eat lots of oat bran do
indeed have less cholesterol in their
blood, not because of any special
pow ers of oat bran but because they
cat less saturated fat and cholesterol.
“There really isn’t any choles
terol-lowering property in oat bran,’’
said Dr. Frank M. Sacks, a co-author
of the study. “Oat bran pretty much
does the same as other cereal prod
ucts.”
Oat bran has been promoted as a
health food largely because it is rich
in soluble fiber. Several studies have
suggested that this kind of fiber some
how removes cholesterol from the
body.
Bui this latest study concluded that
people’s cholesterol levels dropped
just as much when they ate food made
with low-fiber white flour and Cream
ol Wheat as it did with heavy intake
of oat bran, because fat consumption
went down.
The researchers said the lower fat
and cholesterol consumption, not high
liber intake, entirely explained the
drop in cholesterol seen in their study.
The study,conducted on 20 volun
teers, most of them hospital dieti
tians, was directed by dietitian Jams
F. Swain at Brigham aqd Women’s
Hospital in Boston. It was published
in today’s New England Journal of
Medicine.
The volunteers ale seemingly iden
tical muffins, meat loaf and casse
roles for two, six-week periods. Dur
ing one period, the food contained
100 grams, or 3 1/2 ounces, of oat
bran per day, while during the other,
it contained that much white flour or
Cream of Wheal as a control.
On both the oat and non-oat regi
mens, thejr cholesterol levels were
about 7 percent lower than before
they went on the diets. Before the
diets, they were eating 12 percent of
their daily calones in the form of
saturated fat. This fell to 10 percent
while on the high-fiber diet and 9
percent on the low-fiber diet. Con
sumption of cholesterol dropped by
|-—
one-third.
Using dietitians as test subjects
meant the researchers had a healthy
group who already largely followed
recommended dirts. Their cholesterol
levels averaged 186.
Among the reports most widely
cited in favor of oat bran was a study
conducted by dietitian Linda Van Horn
at Chicago’s Northwestern Univer
sity. It found that substituting oat
bran lor other carbohydrates in the
diet lowered blood cholesterol levels
by 3 percent.
Her study attempted to keep lat
consumption constant, and she said
the latest work does not shake her
conviction that oat bran and other
lormsol soluble fiber can lower cho
lesterol.
“With their small sample si/e and
without the dietary control necessary
to monitor the situation, I don’t know
what this means,” she said.
At Quaker Oats Co., which stresses
oat bran’s benefits in its cereal ads,
research scientist Fred Shinnick said
the group studied was too small and
healthy to show a pronounced effect
of oat bran.
“There is a clear cholesterol-low
ering effect when you use oatmeal or
oat bran,” he said. “We don’t think
one small study disproves the weight
of the evidence that has been pub
lished over the past 25 years.”
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